The use of contact centers by organizations for call delivery to its agents is generally known. Contact centers are generally understood to have evolved from call centers. A call center is a call processing system that processes calls through a public switched telephone network (PSTN). The term “contact center” is generally understood to involve calls arriving through the PSTN and also through other communication mediums (e.g., the Internet).
Contact centers are differentiated from telephone and Internet message delivery systems in general by the contact center's ability to automatically deliver calls to any one of a number of agents of the organization based upon some algorithm used by the contact center. Features such as DNIS and ANI within the PSTN may be used to determine an intended call target and an identity of the caller. Similar features may be used with regard to messages sent through the Internet.
By knowing the call target of the caller, the contact center may select an agent who is best suited to handle the subject matter of the call. Further, by knowing an identity of the caller, a host attached to the contact center may retrieve customer records that may be displayed on a terminal of the agent at the instant the call is delivered to the agent.
While contact centers have been effective in advancing the interest of the contact center user, the structure of prior art automatic call distributors has not lend itself to multimedia calls. Often the supporting services of the contact center, by necessity, had to integrated into a local area network. Because of the importance of automatic contact distributors, a need exists for a method of handling and tracking calls entirely through the Internet.